As recent improvement of LSI (large scale integration), a master-slice type LSI has been used in order to easily respond to the variety of consumer's needs.
In fabrication of a master-slice LSI, a plurality of unit cells each having semiconductor devices required for forming predetermined logic circuits are mounted on a semiconductor substrate to form a general-purpose substrate. Then, the semiconductor devices on the general-purpose substrate are connected to each other to form a desired internal cell portion. Then, input-output terminal portions and external terminal connectors are formed around the internal cell portion.
A conventional latch circuit includes a plurality of transistors, a plurality of general resistors, two level-shift resistors, a data input terminal to which an input data is supplied, an output terminal, a strobe signal terminal, and a reset signal terminal.
In the conventional latch circuit, a level of the output terminal is controlled in accordance with a strobe signal supplied to the strobe signal terminal, that is, the operation mode is changed between a data through mode and a latch mode. When a reset signal of high level is supplied to the reset terminal, the two level-shift resistors forces the output terminal to be low level state.
According to the conventional latch circuit, however, there is a disadvantage that the level-shift resistors occupy a large area on a substrate in case where the latch circuit is fabricated form a master slice LSI. Therefore, the semiconductor chip having the conventional latch circuit is large in size.